It was, by common consent, the best ever - eight days of literary cut and thrust where the sun shone, the magnolias bloomed, the crowds arrived in their tens of thousands, and the Sunday Times Oxford Literary Festival came of age as of one the pre-eminent book events in Britain.

Spread over two weekends, from March 29 to April 5, the festival, seemingly occupying every corner of its expanded home at Christ Church, attracted 525 authors to more than 400 different events, in settings that ranged from the capacious - the main tent in the Master's Garden - to the magnificent - the Great Hall in Tom Quad.